TIMED for April Fools Day, this book contains a lesson most of us wish we’d been taught at school.

Why didn’t anyone mention that in the 1950s, American tobacco companies hired PR company Hill and Knowlton to convince the public that cigarettes might not be bad for us?

Or that pseudo-scientists caused the death of millions of Chinese with bogus theories about agriculture and food production. Wilson’s utterly readable book is guaranteed to provide terrific dinner-party material.